Ghosts of our Fathers
by Deplaisance de la Nuit
Summary: Martin's whole purpose in coming to the Mages' Guild was to conquer the nightmares that plagued Julius his father. To conquer them, silence them, change them, whatever it took. To escape the ghosts of the past. But Martin's past was his future, and it did not allow escape.
1. The Face of the Mirror

_Author's Note: This one is not strictly in my continuity, but luminare_ardua's Dragon's Light continuity over on AO3. I am shoveling a lot of my own ideas in, mind. She believes, rather unreasonably, that no one will read the main-quest fic planned to follow this all the way through. (If Lumi is reading this, main-quest fics, even those well below her standards of quality, have a rather unfair advantage in that regard. So nyah.) But I'll take advantage of the license she's giving me to give us both a bit more exposure.  
><em>

**The Face of the Mirror**

She had to forgo the sapphire circlet. It set off the ensemble perfectly, but Caula reluctantly decided it simply wouldn't do, not for a merchants' affair; it would look brash. Perhaps a broad sash in cloth-of-silver... she moved toward the wardrobe, to survey what was to hand.

"I'm glad to catch you alone," said a voice behind her. Uriel stood stiffly in the doorway.

"Hm?" she asked, allowing herself a smile.

"Forgive me that I broach a difficult matter, but-"

"Difficult!" she laughed. (She'd already had an earful on the matter from Enman.) "No," she said tenderly, "no, it's one of the best ideas you've had in years. It'll do the boys a world of good. Go out and see the Empire! There's no better piece of it than this, I'll grant, but it's a small corner all the same. It does little to foster the cosmopolitan spirit. And we'll have a bit more peace and quiet in the palace, too... oh, Uriel, I know things have been difficult between us of late, but... why, whatever is the matter?"

For whatever discomfort her husband had come in with had only redoubled as she spoke.

"It's... it's _Julius_, my queen."

"Julius Ormarson?" she said. "Why, what about him?"

Of course, it had to be then that she saw it. This _was _Julius Ormarson, Mirror Prime. He didn't even have his enchantments on – his chin was uncleft, his eyebrows thick, his eyes unmistakably brown. He was, she granted, dressed as finely as Uriel habitually was. But then he did live in the Palace.

"Ah," she said, floundering in embarrassment as she hadn't in nineteen months. "Well. I see that you continue to earn your pay, at least."

"I endeavor to," said Julius tightly.

"I trust of course that you won't repeat this," she said, as blithely as she could, turning to the wardrobe so her mortified face was at an obfuscating angle. "But then I suppose _that's _part of your pay, too, isn't it..." She paused, her hand midway to the second drawer. "What was it you meant to talk about, anyway?"

But Julius had already gone. Naturally. She sniffed and resumed her preparation for the gala.

As Julius Ormarson, twenty feet from her dressing-chamber door, let his reserve give way and slammed his fist to bruising effect against the palace wall. Uriel... _what _he could have seen in that flittering _cow_...

Time was shorter than he'd thought.

* * *

><p>Ria Silmane had actually turned her back to an open door. It was unbelievable enough that Julius had to magically scan the perimeter to be sure of what he was seeing, but so it was: as he drew closer, she was poring over something he vaguely recognized as an aetheric chart, copied and annotated from another also in her hand, but he would have a hard time with even rudimentary Conjuration this many years gone from Battlespire.<p>

So he made the information gathering more straightforward – in one lunging motion, he grabbed her by her precious raven locks and held his shortsword to her throat.

"I always thought you were wasted as an apprentice," he said calmly, over her expected discomfiture. "But Imperial Battlemage, and no powers of destruction... that, Ria, is another oversight again. Summon anything, and you die before it touches me. Now..."

"You..." There was confusion as much as fear in her face, or at least she arranged it so. "You are one of the Mirrors. You have lost your place here, haven't you? Why... what have I got..."

"I've heard nothing of losing a job, but... No, that is a trifle. Tell me first where the princes are. Tell me where they are bound."

"Do you expect me to believe you have maintained your place as a Mirror?" said Ria, firm and fragile at the same moment. "Your hair, your beard, they belie it. But I tell you I have no part in that loss. Or... the princes? Release me, I beg you."

"The hair is an illusion," he said stiffly, feeling his will beginning to waver. "Not the usual run, that's all." He resteeled himself. "What is your master's intent with the princes? _Where is Uriel?_"

"What are you..." She could barely get the words out, around a lump of hopeless frustration. "What are you talking about?"

Julius, try as he might, found nothing in her manner to convict her. He let go, and spoke as she recomposed herself. "I'm not paid so well only to stand about in a fancy robe twice a month, Ria. I know social cues. Mannerisms. Better than the other Mirrors put together, if I may say so. And for a week now – the week since your master's retirement – Uriel's manner has fled, fled entirely but for the most conscious gestures... and at bottom, Tharn's tics, Tharn's temper. You are innocent of it, I'm sure of that now, but if there is purchase against him, you may know it."

Ria sat, blank and still as though she had been petrified. "I had only given thought to it as far as I was relieved of his presence. However. If I am to be of use to-"

She rose abruptly from her chair.

"He is coming."

Quickly, Julius shot a Chameleon spell at her. Now it was too late to do anything about it, he realized that, with only one door open, the imperfect invisibility would only cover her escape if he put up direct resistance.

That there was no conceivable chance he could win a toe-to-toe struggle with Tharn.

But that was the path he had laid for himself. Turning from it would only mean he'd lose the rest of it.

Tharn strode into Ria's study, clutching a staff with an flywing-green stone head that Julius had never seen, but the power of it was unmistakable. Even now he wore Uriel's face, his raiment, but there was no pretense now. Only mockery.

"Jagar Tharn," said Julius, who had little remaining need for pretense himself. "I never did think you had much of a gift for management."

"Ah, is that what you believe?" he said, arching Uriel's eyebrow. "I fear the Prince of Ambition disagrees..."

Julius allowed himself a grim smile as Tharn began what would no doubt be a long string of remarks in that vein. He never was one to resist a rhetorical tear to his inferiors. He dodged behind Ria's desk and, from that cover, unleashed a firestorm, which incidentally destroyed her notes in the process. He had to trust that Ria herself was long gone.

Tharn's warding barrier absorbed most of the rest.

"Elder Council out of session," called Julius, dodging a spike of ice as he waited for his magic to come back to him. "Your lackey away from her desk. A terrific span of luck – how long do you suppose it will last-"

The next spell hit him. A paralytic beam.

"Julius Ormarson. Faithful to a fault." A terrible grin split the face of his Emperor, as the usurper who wore it advanced. "You do not comprehend how easily I might dispose of you, do you? But I am not without my sentimental side... Yes, you may join your master... Fear not, you will hardly need sustenance where you are going..."

It was his last sight of Mundus. That face. A flash of green light.

He was in a pit, a fiery-hued pit, the walls impossibly high. And no, he was not alone – a figure lay curled, wracked with irregular breath, still in his robes of state... He rushed toward his lord...

But it was then

(not healthy for him to sleep that way)

that the nightmares

(dear I have my hands full right now could you)

took him

(father)

the torments indescribable even as he

"Father!"

Uriel's face, in the firelight. He screamed, his legs propelled him, toppling... the armchair he had dozed off in.

"Julius!" cried Cilla.

Yes. He remembered now. He had been safely outside Oblivion for a dozen years and more. Uriel had much more age on him now...

"A war nightmare," he muttered lamely.

"You still have nightmares from the Simulacrum wars?" said Martin, frowning. The child's perspective – if he hadn't lived to see it, it must have been a very long time ago indeed.

He closed his eyes, so he didn't have to contemplate Martin's face. "Sometimes I fear I always will, my son."


	2. The Dragon's Blessing

**The Dragon's Blessing**

"I... I can't do this any more." Julius had given himself a month to be sure of his decision, and that haunted last month, when half the time, he had a thrill of horror at his own reflection, had more than served its purpose. "Forgive me. I just..."

Uriel's voice was regretful. "I understand."

It was a relief that he didn't have to explain the precise cause of his distress, he reflected as he sipped his brandied tea. But then, Uriel had been in the oubliette beside him.

"I wish I could do the same, you know," said Uriel, with the weariness that had settled in his throat since their return. "Cannibalism resurgent in Valenwood, the Camonna Tong running rampant in Morrowind, Crowns and Forebears back at one another's throats... Summerset can keep Auridon, needless to say..."

It did indeed go without saying. Prince Ebel owed the Summerguard his life.

(The boy had spent half his young life – literally half of it, his entire adolescence – in captivity. It astounded Julius how well he was managing. But it was a strictly stone prison, he had sustenance and conversation, he had not seen his own death, seen his father and brothers die, again and again in every permutation imaginable)

"But you are fortunate, Julius, truly. The only thing you need mend is yourself."

(Usually Julius had been slowly torn apart, subjected to magics that kept him impossibly alive, reduced to nothing but nerve and flesh and agony)

"You might after all have the best of the bargain," said Julius, smiling bravely but still unable to meet Uriel's eyes. "Potatoes and turnips make just as much labor, and for less reward."

"Jauffre will visit from time to time, he vouches."

"Where _is _Jauffre? I'd expected he'd keep your lookout at the Temple for the next year at least."

Uriel sighed through his nose. "It's just come up. Evidently there's a sect of Talos worshippers banging drums against my poor showing as Emperor – which is fair – and calling consequently for my death – which of course I would rather contest."

"Not in Bruma?" said Julius in alarm. He'd already staked out his homestead in the county.

"I daresay the Blades would be prompter if it were."

"Fair enough," said Julius, who had noticed a pattern in that regard. "In any case, I'll naturally wish Jauffre success."

"You are in safe company with me," said Uriel severely. "He _will _succeed, and we both know that perfectly well. If there's any bright thing to be gleaned from that damnable oubliette, it's knowing the wealth of junctures at which I shall _not _die."

There was a silence in which the clink of Uriel's teaspoon against his cup rang unnaturally loud.

"I must contest that," said Julius uncomfortably. "I have had trouble myself, at times, making out what is real, what is memory. More than I would care to admit. But they were the fantasies of the Deadlands, my king, they weren't prophecy, they weren't even set in stone from one moment to the next."

Another silence, more still than the first.

"An inopportune time to discover it," said Uriel with a macabre sort of amusement, "but if that's how the two of us tally, I may have come up with the Dragon's Blessing after all."

The touch of Akatosh, the preternatural insight that surfaced at times in the Septim line. Prophecy. Julius' limbs convulsed as though he were back in the pit. "No. No, Uriel, it won't happen like that, not like any of it... Dagon won't take you..."

"Not for many years," said Uriel, with a voice oddly confident it was nothing but reassuring.

Julius licked his lips, tried to speak. There was something in his throat keeping the sound from getting out.

"If there's any purpose to you going, it's that you're no longer troubled so on my account."

"And... fires?" Julius managed at last, in a hateful squeak that his voice had never collapsed to before. "Dragonfires?"

"Not for many years," said Uriel evenly. "And I am making arrangements against the day. I'd have you live at peace, Julius, as you intend – the alternative does no more good to me, or to Tamriel."

* * *

><p>As a man employed more or less to attract murder attempts, Julius had not given the first thought to marriage in the Imperial City. But, a bit to his bewilderment, he found that his modest wealth, the full Nordic beard he cultivated, and the undisguisable mark of the veteran made him a highly eligible bachelor among the lovely young ladies of Bruma.<p>

Cilla the builder's assistant was not young: she was thirty-four. (Younger than he was, but from the talk of the scholars, his own age was no longer a certainty.) She was not lovely: her face was pinched and her figure boyish. But she had great vigor and a decided wealth of common sense, and from the moment she saw the bookshelves he'd nailed to every shelf in the wall and waxed eloquent on the contents of a dozen of the books they held, Julius knew at once that he loved her. And when, in time, he discovered that she held the confidence of others as nothing short of sacred, he asked her hand in marriage with a proper Nordic haste.

He told her the truth of him, as he never told a soul, but Uriel's truths were not his to tell, and the last of those truths he kept from the thought of. If the world inched closer to Oblivion with each passing year, and if the world might prevail but he himself could do nothing to forestall it, it was best to keep it from his own concern, never mind his wife's.

It would have been good, too, to have a family to look after as well as a field. But their first daughter was born dead, and Cilla came close to the grave losing the next, and as her convalescence became a certainty, they heavily agreed there would be no more attempt.

When Jauffre made one of his rare visits weeks later, offering a nameless and motherless child to raise, they could scarcely believe their good fortune.

* * *

><p><em>The very image of his father, isn't he? <em>Karinnarre the merchant had bubbled on their trip into town. _If anything, Cilla, I would question his maternity!_

Julius had said nothing further than he had to the rest of the day, but as soon as Martin had fallen soundly asleep (these habits were to be developed early), he began curtly, "Well. I would say Karinnarre has a point."

"Not at all," said Cilla, in the bantering way she had that always hid counsel close under the surface. "He's got my olive complexion, after all. And your father's eyes."

"Fa's eyes were blacker than mine."

"They weren't if I say so," said Cilla firmly. "If it's on this account your sleep's been poor the past month, I could have spoken to you sooner had I known."

"I needed a judgment other than my own. I can't always trust mine as I ought to." Julius cast his face despairingly to the wood-beam ceiling. "Cilla, how can we possibly compare as parents with the Emperor of all Tamriel?"

"To be honest, Julius? Emperors rarely make good fathers, and what you've said of Uriel..." She sighed. "Oh, I know you're never one to hear a word against the man, so never mind that, but I should hope I at least compare favorably to Caula bloody Voria.."

"You would take a bit more interest in his schooling," Julius acknowledged.

"And I will. To begin with, I daresay I'll have Martin reading sooner than any royal tutor would manage, and certainly with more enthusiasm. Their sort would want to beat it in – I've never thought these high-class tutors cared much for reading themselves, and that'd be why they fall short."

Julius couldn't help but smile to anticipate it.

They had been entrusted with the care of a prince without the barest warning. He could not fully suppress the notion that they had been entrusted with the fate of the world in the process. But if so, there _were_ still many years before them. And, when his worries were put aside, he did judge himself to do well. As a son, Martin was easy to love.

* * *

><p>Martin grew to be a quick study. It was a struggle to set him to a task, but when he chose one himself, there was little to get in the way of it. One summer's night when he was seven, he came into the house with a magelight hovering behind him, and Julius was forced to tamp down on his pride and give Martin a lengthy lecture on what could come of a spell incompletely understood – he could just as easily have picked up the book next to it that told how to start a magical fire.<p>

So Martin asked him for instruction on that, too, and soon enough he had charge of the fireplace. Martin was a boy to whom smiles came rarely, so to see him smile with pride was all the more rewarding for that.

Julius took particular care to pass to Martin some of his social observation.

You see how loud that lad's voice is, how laxly he stands? He's lying about the work he's done on the new cart, and what's more he doesn't particularly care that we know it. Let's follow him back to his master's place – I'll bet he's given up putting the boy straight, but we've got eyes, haven't we? And when he's actually got it completed, I'll be sure to let him know how well I appreciate it, so he'll do a brisk job the next time, or at least know prompt work is good for him.

Emme and Tourmal are always quarreling, and Emme's the only one who ever wants to make amends. Well, have you seen them make up? Ah, so Emme has a benign smile and Tourmal tells her to eat dung. Well, neither of them are making amends, then, and Tourmal's right not to – Emme's making promises she fully intends to break for her ma's benefit, and I'd better tell her so myself. If she were sorry, she'd look it from time to time. By the way, it'd be the same if Emme frowned with bit of a pout, not drawing the cheeks – like so.

Martin picked it up well, Julius thought. But in time, he and Cilla began to notice that Martin couldn't always explain his observations of people's emotions, and that some of them were beyond the understanding of his years. It was the Dragon's Blessing, they concluded, and if it made him a better judge of character than his father, it was blessing indeed.

So passed the waking hours. But asleep, his mind seemed bent on undermining everything he set to build.

If Dagon had had mastery of his sleep for a decade, more, less, whatever it was, his own dreams had proven an avid apprentice. As Martin grew to resemble his father ever more markedly, the dreams took avid note. What he'd seen in the pit, and more he'd invented to torment himself over the years, all took Martin's shape. Martin was Geldall, drowned in the hordes pouring from Battlespire. He was Enman, bound to a sacrificial altar. He was Calaxes, appointed by Tharn to the Temple of the One and murdered by Tharn within it. And there, he was Tharn, too. So often, there was the pervasive suggestion that Tharn had taken Martin's guise, or that Martin was Tharn all along.

After the incident where he'd well-nigh burned the old armchair in terror of Martin's face, he was forced to admit to himself that these horrid fancies were not always confined to the sleeping world. Julius Ormarson, Mirror Prime, who had prided himself on seeing fine distinctions, could no longer be relied on to tell the face of his greatest tormentor from the face of his own son.

The more he worried about it, the less he slept, and the worse were the dreams. And then he worried more. He told Cilla everything, in those rare moments he could be trusted with privacy. She told him it was best not to worry. But this, he couldn't manage. She would try to divert him with some absorbing task, but he saw the gambit for what it was. And he worried.


End file.
